Four years later

“Welcome home, little prince,” I say as Embry walks through the door, stamping the snow off his dress shoes, followed by three sets of small snowy boots behind him.

“Daddyyyyyyy!” screams Galahad, racing through the door after Embry and launching himself into my arms. Little Imogen, almost four, follows suit, followed by Arthur who, at barely two, still has a binky stuck firmly in his mouth. Soon I’m on the floor with my three children crawling all over me, my phone still warm in my pocket from my weekly phone call with Lyr, who’s settling into his off-campus apartment in Manhattan.

“You are going to get covered in snow,” Embry warns, hanging up his coat, because—sure enough—all the kids appear to have rolled from the car in the snow rather than walked, but I don’t care. It’s only been three days since I’ve seen them, but whenever they’re gone, I miss them like my skin is flayed raw. Same with Embry and Greer.

But that’s all about to change.

“How did it go?” I ask, helping my stepson out of his coat and boots before moving on to my daughter.

“Surely you were watching on TV—”

The door blows open, bringing Greer inside in a gust of white wool and long blond hair. Snow is caught in her hair and eyelashes, and already my blood is warming as I think about licking the snowflakes off her skin. Maybe tonight after we put the kids to bed, I can bring in some snow from outside and Embry and I can take turns teasing her with the cold…

And then she opens up her coat and I see something fuzzy and wriggling and alive cradled against her chest.

A kitten.

“What is that?” I ask with some amusement.

“Kay sent it home,” Greer says, toeing off her snowy high heels. “She said the kids would need something to remember the White House by, so she got them a white kitten. Imogen’s already named it Jana, by the way.”

Imogen nods solemnly at this, toddling over to her mother to carefully take the kitten and crush it to her chest. Arthur trails after her, not reaching for the kitten, just keeping watch with his bright blue eyes and his binky moving in thoughtful sucks. Even though he’s the baby, he’s the protective one, constantly following Galahad and Imogen around with a concerned look on his face.

“Kay was magnificent of course,” Embry says, unwinding his scarf and pulling off his gloves. “And I froze my balls off.”

“I hope not. I have plans for them.”

Even now, more than two decades later, my tone makes him flush, which sends Greer’s eyes flaring with interest. Which makes other parts of me flare with interest.

But first, bedtime.

Between the three of us, we get the three kids bathed and brushed and swaddled in warm footie pajamas. “Can we sleep in your bed tonight?” Galahad asks, and then cannily nudges Imogen, who looks up from her kitten prisoner to blink up at us with huge, soft green eyes, which none of us can say no to. So we end up all piled in bed, the snow falling heavily outside, the three adults still dressed and watching the news as our kids slowly melt into sleep snuggled against us. The kitten kneads little kitty biscuits on my thigh, and then curls up in my lap in a tiny, fluffy ball.

“Did you talk to Kay at all today?” Greer asks after a while. “I wondered if you’d get a chance.”

“I did. Mom stayed here last night before she went on to D.C. too.”

Both Kay and my mother know I’m alive, as do Lyr and Morgan and Vivienne and Nimue. I told them all after Greer and Embry found me again, and my mother in particular was furious with me, but when I explained to her why I did it—not just for the two people I loved but because I hadn’t known if I would live or not, and it seemed the best way to save my legacy in light of that uncertainty, she began to understand. Even now, four years later, she is still working on forgiving me, but I can handle being unforgiven so long as I am allowed to love her anyway.

There are boxes all over the normally neat room—the movers came from the White House earlier today while I made myself scarce on a long, snowy hike. The price of being dead is that I have to stay dead, which means I don’t get to leave New Camelot very much, but thanks to Merlin’s modern magic and documents of dubiously legal origin, I’ve been able to go some places, provided I’ve grown a beard and I’m wearing contacts to hide the distinctive green of my eyes. But mostly I don’t want to leave. Merlin chose this place for its proximity to the capital, and at least twice or thrice a week, Embry and Greer and our children are able to come to me. All of them have only ever known New Camelot as their other home, and me as Daddy.

And now this is their real home. Our real home. Embry declined a second term, and Kay has taken his place, and now there’s nothing ahead of us but the rest of our lives.

“I think they’re asleep,” I whisper. “Should we go downstairs?”

Greer and Embry nod, and we all get up—I move Jana the kitten, who gives a protesting squeak as I do—and nestle her close to Imogen. Then we tiptoe out of the room and go downstairs; I grab a baby monitor on the way out.

“I can’t believe it’s finally over,” Embry murmurs as we walk down the curved staircase to the main floor.

“I can,” says Greer. “It feels like I’ve been waiting forever.”

I privately agree, although I don’t say so as I pull a plain silver key from my pocket, a twin to the one I gave Greer and Embry four years ago. Both my husband and my wife change as I unlock the door to the basement. They grow quieter, more excited, even the sound of the key in the lock getting their blood hot.

I gesture for them to go first so I can lock the door behind us and give the doorknob a sound shake to make sure it will hold. The children seem to accept having three parents as a matter of course, but I think it’s best to wait on explaining the kink to them. Maybe when they’re thirty. Or never.

The other reason I make them go first is so that I can have the private pleasure of watching them walk in front of me, Embry’s head near to Greer’s, his strong, elegant hand at her back to guide her safely down. It’s been agony living apart from them; I’ve had to remind myself often that I might have died that night—that I get to see them at all is a blessing, and that I get to have tonight and every night for the rest of our lives is more than a blessing, it’s the touch of God.

But even though I’ve missed them like air itself when they can’t be with me, watching their marriage grow and solidify has been worth every night in a cold bed, every day with an empty nursery. It may have taken them a long time to forgive me, but there’s no way I can regret it now, when the three of us are stronger for the past four years they’ve spent together. Each side of our triangle is now tempered with time and trust and wisdom, each point where the triangle meets is fused watertight.

And I’m a patient man. I knew that I would have all the time in the world to demand back every kiss and touch and stroke that I missed. I plan to start demanding right now, actually.

When we reach the foot of the stairs, I snap my fingers and feel the familiar heat in my blood as Greer drops to her knees. My cock, already lazily stirring, thickens and swells at the sight of her. Embry makes it worse by dropping his gaze to where the thin wool reveals the shape of my erection and he licks his lips.

“Ready to kneel, little prince?”

“Never,” he says, in a voice that means always.

We walk through another doorway into our private playroom, Greer crawling behind me and Embry walking a few steps behind her, admiring the view.

“Undress,” I command them both, and they hurry to obey as I look on with crossed arms and my cock tenting my pants.

I spend a few quiet moments taking in their bodies, which are now exposed and offered up. I met and loved both of them when they were young, but all these years later, I find their bodies more perfect and dear to me than ever. The faint stretch marks on Greer’s belly, the silver salting through Embry’s hair. She’s in her thirties now, both Embry and I are brushing up against forty-five, but like Embry said once to me, we make each other feel young.

And down here, where I am Sir and king, we make each other feel alive.

“I think Embry deserves a little reward after today,” I say, stroking the crown of Greer’s head after she drops back to kneeling. “Don’t you think so, pet?”

She nods.

“Then up on the bench.”

Embry groans as our wife stretches out along the length of the bench, her hands going over her head in anticipation of being tied and her legs spreading wide in anticipation of being used. Her pussy gleams pink and wet in the soft light of the playroom.

“Can I touch myself?” Embry asks in a needy voice as I take a set of silk ropes off a nearby hook. “Please?”

“No, you may not,” I answer, starting on Greer’s wrists.

He gives a plaintive groan, his hands flexing wildly at his sides, which only serves to amuse me and harden my cock even further. Denying him is so very sweet, especially when the thing I’m denying him is already wet and arching under my ropes. With the ease of years of practice, I secure her to the bench with wraps under her breasts and around her waist; with a simple frog tie, I have her legs bent and bound, her cunt opened up for me and Embry like a blown flower.

“Oh, God,” Embry says in a strangled voice. “Jesus fuck.”

“Yes?”

“Please,” he begs. “Please let me fuck her.”

“You want to fuck that pussy? It’s mine, though.”

Embry’s breathing hard enough that I can see the muscles jerking around his stomach and ribs as he struggles for air. Below his navel, his cock is a livid plum color and hard enough to hammer nails.

“I’ll let you fuck her,” I say, running a finger up Greer’s slick folds and then sliding that finger into her mouth for her to clean. “If you give me something.”

“Anything,” Embry vows.

“Mm, anything. I like the sound of that. Okay, then. Climb between her legs and tell me how that cunt feels.”

Embry obeys as eagerly as a youth; clambering on the bench so fast he bangs his knee against the edge. He doesn’t care, he needs it too much, and he lets out a wild grunt as it takes him longer than he can stand to press the tip of his dick against her entrance and nudge inside. But when he does finally push into her heat, he gives an almighty groan and slumps over our helplessly bound wife, resting all his weight on her and burying his face in her neck as his hips pump furiously into her spread pussy.

I squat next to the bench so I can stroke Greer’s face as she’s being used. “Is Embry making my wife feel good?” I ask.

“Yes,” she breathes, color high in her cheeks and her teeth digging into her lower lip.

“Is he going to make that pussy come for me?”

She gives a tiny whine, nodding and closing her eyes. I slide my hand between their bodies and tuck my fingers around Greer’s clit to add to the pressure. I catch the gleam of my wedding ring between the lean ridges of his stomach and the soft curves of Greer’s belly, and my heart does that thing again, where it feels so full I can’t stand it.

My husband and my wife.

My prince and my queen.

“Show him how good that pussy comes, angel,” I murmur to her, kissing her temple and watching where my hand moves between them. “Show him how wet it gets.”

With an abrupt pained cry, she obeys, writhing hard against her ropes as Embry rides her hard through it all, grunting every time her cunt squeezes around his cock. I keep massaging her clit until she’s done, and then I make her lick my fingers clean as I watch.

God, her lips are so pink and pretty around my fingertips…her tongue so wet and clever…and those silver eyes sparkle with the same curious light I saw in a submissive teenager once upon a time, as she begged a soldier to wreck her under a full English moon.

When she’s finished, I tuck away her hair so it won’t tickle her face and lean in to kiss her tenderly. “Welcome home,” I whisper against her lips. They taste like her now, a hint of salt, a hint of tart, lots of sweet. “I’m ready for forever now.”

“I’m ready for forever too,” she whispers back.

Embry lifts his head, slowing his thrusts so he can kiss each of us in turn, mumbling his own things about forever, but his words are broken across the shore of his pleasure and he can barely get them out.

That’s okay. I have other plans for his mouth.

I stand up, take the baby monitor out of my pocket and stand it on a nearby table, checking to make sure the volume is dialed all the way up and the video feed is live and showing three snoozing lumps of footy pajama and binky…and one white kitten.

Babies safely asleep, I turn back to my husband, who is still working his cock in and out of our wife’s cunt and who is also eyeing me with hunger. And when I reach for the back of his head and unfasten my pants with my other hand, he already has his mouth open like the good little prince he is.

The moment the crown of my cock brushes against his satin tongue, I forget to go easy. I force my length all the way down his throat, admiring the hollows of his cheeks and the way his lashes lay long and thick on his cheekbones before I pull out and give him a chance to breathe.

“Mmm,” Greer says from below us. “Fuck, that’s hot.”

“Dirty little queen,” I tell her. “You like watching me fuck his mouth? You like watching me use him?”

She has to swallow before she answers and I see she’s close to coming again. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“What should I do next?”

“Fuck his ass,” she says, and her voice is full of all the best kinds of filth and prurience.

I pull out of Embry’s mouth and give his face a playful slap. “I never like to say no to a lady,” I say, stripping off my thin sweater and pants and then reaching for the lube.

Embry shivers as he feels the push of my knees as I climb behind him, and then he says, “Wait, Ash. Wait.”

I have two fingers covered in lube, one hand on his ass, and a cock that’s so ready to fuck it’s a miracle I haven’t fucked them both twice over already. But at the word wait, I immediately settle back on my heels and drop my hand. “What is it, Embry?”

“I don’t want you to stop,” he says quickly. “I just…I wanted a minute to savor this. So I can remember what it felt like the first time you fucked us when we were all yours again.”

“Oh.” His words burn a happy glow in my chest.

“Embry and I have loved our time together,” Greer adds, looking up at me with those moon-sea eyes. “But this is where we belong. Under your care. At your feet.”

“Yes,” I say, because it’s the simple truth. It’s where they belong, and in return for their love, I’ll give them everything of me forever. I already have. I always will.

Embry looks over his shoulder at me. “Are you going to fuck me or what?” And I have to laugh because he might as well be twenty-one again, petulant and impatient. Spoiled.

And I might as well be twenty-two again, consumed with all the ways I’d like to fuck the petulance right out of him.

I prepare him with all the humiliating and examining probes and presses that he likes so much, and then I press my thighs to the backs of his. His asshole is a ring of taut heat at the head of my cock, and it feels like I’m being swallowed whole as I slick and shove my way inside.

“Don’t I get a reward too?” I say into his ear as I fuck him with slow pushes and pulls. “For being so patient?”

“Yes,” he moans. “Yes. Anything.”

“How about everything?”

“Everything.”

And then the three of us fuck for a long time in silence, my every thrust pushing his cock deeper into Greer, our every moan reverberating through each other’s flesh and filling the room.

“Come inside our princess, Embry. Show her how much you can give her.”

I highlight my words with a wicked roll of my hips and then Embry is shuddering and gasping, his ass clenching around my cock as he drains his body into Greer’s, and then I come with a sharp grunt and an agonizingly delicious clench low in my groin, spilling deep, deep into his most secret place.

We stay in a heap for a minute, all of us breathing hard and relishing the trickles and flutters of post-sex bliss, and then in tandem, we all turn our heads to the baby monitor, unable to believe our luck.

The lumps are all still curled and cuddled and fast asleep.

“More?” I ask my spouses.

“More,” they agree.

I untie Greer, we shower quickly, and then we spend the night celebrating the rest of forever. Embry and I share Greer between us, we make her crawl, we make her suck on our cocks until we can’t stand it anymore and then we share her again. At the end, I let Embry have my ass as Greer and I kiss in languorous, tender kisses and she traces the jagged scar on my stomach, and eventually Greer begs to ride me as I’m being fucked. We turn into a tangled mess of limbs and cocks and hair, and it’s perfect, it’s everything, and when we come, we come together. One heart. One life.

The snow is still blowing in reckless swirls past the windows when we climb sated and spent upstairs, as we shower and brush our teeth and contemplate the limited room on the bed—a bed I even had custom made to accommodate three adults and some children smashed between.

“Oh,” Greer says suddenly, looking pale. “I don’t feel well.” And then she turns and walks back to the bathroom. A few seconds later, we hear the unmistakable sounds of retching.

Embry and I look at each other.

Then we’re both bolting to the bathroom.

“There are tests somewhere in here,” Embry mutters, rifling though the bathroom drawers. “We ought to start buying them in bulk, really.”

I smile at that, kneeling behind Greer so I can sweep her hair up off her neck while she’s sick. “Are you late, princess?”

“Just by a couple of days,” she whines. “And maybe it was just some bad seafood or something.”

I hear a phone ding from the bedroom, and Embry trots back to get it—force of habit from being the President, I suppose, there’s no call or text that goes unlooked at—and then I hear him laughing.

“Who would be texting at this hour?” our wife grouses.

Embry is walking in as she says this, and he holds the phone so we can both see the screen. It’s from Merlin.

Congratulations.

I can’t help it, I laugh too. And then harder as the second text comes in.

You might want to consider buying twice the usual amount of clothes.

“Fuck,” Embry says in wonder as he reads it. He looks down at Greer and me as I rub soothing circles on her back. “Twins?”

“Twins!” wails Greer, right before she’s sick again.

“Why not?” I say, my heart so warm and happy that I think it might light up the snowy darkness outside. “We have the rest of forever to figure it out, right?”

“We do,” swears Embry as he gets to his knees to comfort Greer. She slumps into me, and soon both of them are in my arms, between my legs, as I sit against the bathroom wall, rubbing warm caresses on their backs and necks, feeling them both cradle each other as I’m cradling them.

And I can’t help but of think how fitting it is, that my forever will start right here. Not on that flat-topped hill in Somerset, not on the shore of a lake that beckons me to some other fog-haunted world. Not on a field of bloody victory or in the White House.

No, forever starts right here, with the two people I’ve loved through every lifetime, with the two people that I will love in every lifetime after this. Here on a bathroom floor, with the promise of new life between us, with our other new lives slumbering sweetly nearby, with our bodies still loose and aching from loving each other so much.

Forever starts here. With my husband and my wife. My prince and my queen. The three of us sharing one heart, which beats together, and which will beat together in every lifetime yet to come.